Sharing the Burden
by Taylor Hayes
Summary: Following Swan Song, Dean gets a call from Gabs. Continuation of my Winchester, Smith and Wesson 'verse. Rated for Dean's bad language.


SHARING THE BURDEN

a/n This is a short continuation of my story Winchester, Smith & Wesson. And it is set just after Swan Song. BEWARE: angst!Dean and angst!Gabs. They're awesome! And Dean's language is the reason for the rating.

Dean's phone rang. He wanted to ignore it. He couldn't take jobs right now.

But if someone needed help, Dean should answer and pass them on to Bobby.

Looking down at the number, he blinked a few times, then flipped open the phone. "Gabs?"

There was silence for a few moments, then that familiar, roughly sweet voice spoke. "Bobby called. He told me... what happened. How are you doing?"

Dean's response was calm and cool. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me."

More silence, until Dean was beginning to wonder if the call had been dropped. As he was about to hang up, Gabrielle spoke again, her tone hard and cold. "Where are you?"

"What?"

"Dean Winchester, tell me where the hell you are." There was no room for argument in the words.

In confusion, he repeated the address of Lisa's house.

"I'll be there in four hours."

"_What?_ No, Gabrielle. You can't-"

A dial tone was his only answer.

...

Four hours and six minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was after ten, and Lisa appeared confused as she answered the door.

Standing on the front porch was Gabrielle Wesson, tall and impossibly beautiful, even with her black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, no makeup, and her wife beater and jeans worn and ripped.

Her dark eyes stared down at Lisa in surprise, then slid past her to study the house. Finally returning her focus back to the smaller woman, she said, "I'm looking for Dean Winchester."

As Lisa opened her mouth to respond, the man in question walked down the hall to stand behind her.

His green eyes were clouded and angry, but his face was an expressionless mask.

"You really didn't have to come, Gabrielle."

"Shut up, Winchester," was her abrupt reply. "Let's go."

They shared a long, intense stare, which Lisa had no idea how to read. Eventually, Dean's eyes dropped and he nodded.

"Dean?" Lisa was worried. Dean wasn't acting like himself, and a strange woman he clearly had some kind of past with had shown up to take Dean away.

"Dean?" The repetition of his name was really a different question entirely. _Are you coming back?_

He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly and softly said, "I don't know how long we'll be gone. But I promise I'll be home as soon as I can. Let Ben know, okay?"

With a little sigh of relief, Lisa went up on her tiptoes and gave him a small, swift kiss on the cheek and turned back towards the kitchen to finish the dishes.

Dean rotated back to Gabrielle, the mask hiding the anxiety and pain building up inside of him.

"Come on."

He followed her down the stairs and out to her car. He still recognized the beauty of the lipstick red '68 Shelby Mustang Cobra GT500KR, but it was a secondary thing. For once, there was no awe or joy at the sight of the classic American muscle car.

Without a word, they both slid in and Gabrielle started the vehicle. The engine roared to life and they began to drive in complete silence. He remembered Sam telling him Gabrielle didn't play music while she drove.

Sam.

Choking on the powerful cocktail of emotions, Dean forced it all away. He knew Gabrielle must be watching him.

It only took them twenty minutes before Gabrielle turned the Shelby on to a long, bumpy dirt track. Eventually, they reached a large, empty field of low grass. With a little shudder, the car was turned off.

When Gabrielle got out, Dean simply followed, holding on to his feelings as hard as he could as the familiar smells of grass and dirt and gasoline reached him.

He came around to the front of the car and found Gabrielle sitting casually on the hood, face pointed up to the sky, watching the wide, dark, star-filled expanse.

The sight nearly broke his composure. It reminded him too much of-

"-Sam. And I barely caught it, but-"

Dean's eyes flashed back to Gabrielle's face as she spoke, gaze wide with the pain he was trying so hard to hide. "What?"

"He told me, back when I was out of it after I got cut up on the vamp job, that you guys would do this. When you had extra time, you'd park and sit out and just watch the stars."

Dean felt his throat go tight, and he clenched his jaw against the ache in his chest.

She watched all of this, dark eyes far too aware. "Sit down, Winchester."

With a slow sigh, he eased down beside her, trying to relax his body. But his clenched fists belayed the attempt.

Closing his eyes tightly, he didn't even realize Gabrielle had stood until she sat back beside him. "Here." She shoved something chilled towards his hand, and Dean took it, expecting a beer bottle, or a flask of vodka. But it didn't feel like that at all.

Eyes shooting open, Dean stared down in confusion at the tire iron he held, then looked up to Gabrielle.

She answered his unspoken question in the roundabout way she had. "Bobby only told me about everything that happened yesterday. Then I called Castiel."

"What? He's back in Heaven. Isn't he?"

"He was," Gabrielle replied, tilting her head to the side. "I summoned him."

"How the holy hell did you pull that?" Dean asked in astonishment.

A little shrug, and a matter of fact answer of "His Grace", left Dean even more puzzled.

She sighed. "To heal me, he used a measure of his Grace. It was actually Bobby's suggestion to see if even a hint of that Grace remained. Apparently there was enough left to pull him into a circle of Enochian sigils. Bobby helped."

"Are you_ kidding me?_" Dean burst out angrily. "What the hell did you think you were doing? You could have burned your friggin' eyes out! You could've _died!_"

That shrug again.

"Idiots," Dean muttered.

Gabrielle continued. "What matters is that he came. And he and Bobby laid the whole damn thing out for me.

"You need to let it out, Dean."

"I don't know what the hell you mean."

"Dean Winchester, Sam is in _Hell_. Your baby brother, the person you love more than anything or anyone in the universe, the brother you based your entire goddamn life on, the brother whose opinion and well being were what you lived for, Samuel Winchester, son of John and Mary Winchester, your little brother, is in _Hell_."

Dean's entire body felt tight and the heat and hurt inside him was trying to burst through his skin. Holding himself immobile was the second hardest thing he'd ever done.

The first had been letting Sammy jump into that pit.

"And the only reason you're not doing everything in your power to save him has got to be that he made you promise not to. Made you promise to have the regular life _he_ wanted.

"You had to stand aside and let him go to Hell. And he made you swear you wouldn't try to save him. Because of how much you love him, you can't save him."

Every word hit Dean like a blow, banging against the brittle shell he'd built around his heart.

"Sammy is in Hell. Forever. And you _can not save him_."

With a feral yell, Dean struck out at the relentless voice. Gabrielle was already gone, and the tire iron slammed into the Shelby's hood with a shocking crash.

Breathing hard, staring down at the heavy dent in the car's metal, Dean's eyes turned to Gabrielle, shining with wild rage and terror and loss. The hands wrapped around the iron bar were trembling.

Still quiet and cool, she met his look with a glint of tears. "Go ahead, Dean. It's why we took my car, and not the Impala. You need to let this all out or it's going to kill you."

"Maybe that wouldn't be so bad," came the gruff, shaking reply.

She just glared. "How the hell would that be any better, Dean? Sam'd still be in Hell. And Bobby, Castiel, that gal you're with, the kid I saw pictures of, Lizzy... and me. Me, Dean. I'm grieving for Sam. Don't make them, don't make me, have to mourn you too, Dean Winchester."

"You barely knew him!" he screamed. "He was my baby brother! HE AND DAD WERE MY WHOLE LIFE! _AND THEY'RE BOTH FUCKING DEAD!_"

Everything was suddenly too much. The cold iron in his hand, the shining perfection of the car before him, the heavy weight of the endless sky, and the absence of Sam's warm presence at his side became all he was conscious of.

With a wild cry that was a witness to all the emotions he had tried to repress, he leapt forward and brought the metal bar crashing down on the Shelby Cobra, again and again and again and again and...

Dean had no idea how long he had been at it when he was finally able to step back, surveying the trashed mess of the once gorgeous car. Objectively, he knew he had been cut when the glass from the shattered windows flew. He knew his muscles ached from the swings, and that sweat soaked his clothes.

And he knew his brother was gone.

The moan that escaped him was reminiscent of a dying animal. The metal bar dropped from his grasp on to the ground, and he followed it down. Sobs shook his body, and the tears wouldn't stop. He was more alone then he had ever been in his life, even when Sammy had abandoned the family for Stanford and their dad had gone missing.

Why was he pretending he was okay? It was all a lie. All Dean really wanted to do was to die.

Then warm arms wrapped around him, holding Dean with all the strength Gabrielle could muster. They weren't the arms Dean really wanted embracing him, or rocking him, but for the moment it was enough.

Dean had never cried like this in his life. There were many times where he had come close - but the utter hopelessness had never been so overwhelmingly powerful before. There was no thought of stopping the rivers of salt water that stung his cheeks, or the heaving of his chest as he fought for air. There was only this moment of complete vulnerability.

Finally, _finally_, after what seemed like hours or days, Dean was cried out. He had no tears left to shed, and the grief and the anger were gone.

Only the guilt remained.

He tried to stand, tried to pull away, but Gabrielle held him tighter. It was only then that he realized she was crying too.

"Gabs?"

She looked up, and the pain in those dark eyes mirrored the ache that lurked in his own forest green pair.

A deep breath, and a moment of silence, then Gabs released Dean and stood. He pushed to his own feet and stared down again at the damage he had wrought on the once-perfect, classic muscle car.

Before Dean could apologize, or feel the guilt for this as well, Gabrielle held out the two beers Dean had been expecting earlier. When she perched on the dented hood of her car, he followed suite, and they stared out in to the darkness together.

"Chrissy's dead."

Gabs' words pierced the night air, and Dean spun to peer over at her. He had to swallow twice before whispering, "What happened?"

Her head shook back and forth. "A car crash. Nothing special, or unusual, or supernatural, or anything, about it. Just an everyday, run-of-the-mill car crash

"The gal who hit Melanie's car isn't even hatable. She's a young mother who wasn't watching the light because her kids were throwing a tantrum. She's completely broken up about it.

"I can't hate her. And, _dammit_, I need somebody to hate! The only person left to blame is me."

Dean tried, he really tried, to say the right words. "It's not your fault, Gabs. Even if you were there-"

"There wouldn't have been anything I could do anyway, right? Can you tell yourself that about Sam? That nothing you did could have changed it?"

He closed his eyes tightly, and his head dropped. "No. No, there must have been something I could've done. I just didn't figure it out in time."

Her head dropped heavily on to his shoulder. "Exactly, Dean. Exactly."

And they sat together, sharing their heartache, comforting each other just by being there, for the rest of the night.

fin.


End file.
